


Pain you can't recover from

by RotChan



Series: Don't starve short fics [5]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Coping, Depression, Gen, Headcanon, Heavy Angst, Loss, M/M, Memory Loss, Short, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 23:16:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20321155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RotChan/pseuds/RotChan
Summary: Wilson copes with a loss.





	Pain you can't recover from

**Author's Note:**

> Following the theme of "Maxwell is free from the throne but isn't the same". This one just doesn't have a happy ending.  
Also this story is based heavily on my headcanons, so please keel that in mind.
> 
> Sorry in advance for mistypes, this is unbeta and done over a phone. I'll fix what mistakes I come across.
> 
> It might be a mess, but please enjoy anyways ♡

It was evening. He was supposed to be working now. Hunting, fixing tents, or fixing his broken machines, anything but this. He wished he was doing anything but this.

He sat on his knees, bent in on himself, cradling a grey flower in his hands tightly. His voice had grown tired, rough and raspy. The earth beneath him was damp with tears as they landed. A steady hand on his back trying to smooth the heavy trembling from his body, to keep him somewhat grounded as he shouted curses at nothing. At something.

It hurt so _fucking _much. 

He worked so _hard_. He gave _everything _he had.

What he saved wasn't the man he loved. Maxwell was not _his _Max. This Maxwell spoke different, acted different, saw different. He didn't cry for Wilson when he woke in the dirt, grey clouds first witnessing his awakening. No, he cried for **_her._**

Max was gone, and there was only Maxwell. Wilson cried harder, his voice a near scream. There was a presence at his side, one that offered support, their fuzzy arms wrapped tightly around his middle as they cooed softly. Wilson was deaf to them though. He would've liked to believe it was ok, wanted to believe that everything was alright and it would get better, but then he'd be lying to himself.

Eventually day became dusk, and the survivors had to retire for rest. Wilson, however, didn't. Couldn't rest, despite how much he wanted to. He was exhausted, but he could only stare at where Max used to lay. The scientist could close his eyes now, he could imagine Max, very much there, speaking to him with the British accent he loved so much. He reached his hand out, and he could imagine Max laughing at the gesture, calling him a romantic while taking Wilson's thin hand into his own, kissing his knuckles with soft lips. He could imagine a long arm slinking around his shoulders, holding him, humming and rocking him until he drifted away.

And there was humming, Wilson realized, but not of Max. This was a female, her voice low but gentle, as gentle as her hands in his hair. He must have drifted, for he didn't remember her entering his tent, or managing to adjust him until his head rest on her bossom.

He also realized he had been crying again, her shirt wet under his cheek. Wigfrid didn't seem to mind, though, he would have to thank her for that at some point.

He lay, listening to her voice vibrate through her chest as she consoled him like she would a child. He didn't care.

By morning, Wigfrid was gone, though it wasn't as surprise. Wilson was buried in warm beefalo covers, all too inviting to stay put and never leave, and he was more than pleasured to accept it. He could hear active life outside his tent, yet not a single soul had told him to stir. He thanked them silently.

He wouldn't be able to handle it, seeing Maxwell again, seeing the doppleganger of his beloved give him sour glares. One look from those pale blue eyes and Wilson knew he'd crumble to pieces. Apart of him wanted to believe that memories would come back to Maxwell, make him the man he was on the throne, but the throne did things to people. Changed them and warped them. Max was likely never real to begin with, and that shattered what hope Wilson had left inside his heart.

There was no heavenly gates at which Max would wait at, no spirit of a lost loved one watching over him as if he was still there. Wilson wanted to cease his existence but to what point, there was no Max at all. No Max would be there for him, to tell him he tried but that it was fine now.

Wilson cried again.

The flower was still on the chest at his feet, he knew, grey and withering. Max had given it to him, and that was all that was left. Shaky hands cupped delicately around the fallen petals of a very much deceased plant, holding them with such care as warm, salted tears rained down his face. He very much felt as Wendy had, but unfortunately for him, Max wasn't there like Abigail was for her. 

The camp seemed to quieted when he exited his shared tomb, eyes puffy and hands still grasping carefully around the flower. Some stopped and watched him trudge to his machines, others didn't dare to acknowledge him. He didn't care much. He set the flower to his side, and like a machine himself, set forth fixing his machines.

Wilson had entirely avoided places Max used to be. At supper, he would sit as far as he could from the spot he and Max used to share. He wouldn't dare go near the flower field Max used to walk through with him, sharing stories of his magic shows.

Simple things became too much for the smaller man, and he would often find himself trapped inside his tent, their tent, the only place he could bare being close at all.

It wasn't healthy, of course, but he didn't care to stop, and others didn't try to either. It became very apparent that most of them didn't understand how to deal with situations like these. Wendy, for what she could, offered help, and Webber had tried to to cheer Wilson up with small attempts at puns. Both recieved minor reactions, and both soon let the man be. Occasionally, Wigfrid would ask how he was and if he needed some time for walks, to which he often declined, now he was very much left alone. When he wasn't doing his work for the camp, he was in his tent, speaking softly to himself in his mother tongue, the quiet all too loud for his taste.

Sometimes he spoke as if he were talking tk Max, telling him stories he had already told, chuckling at funny parts and quieting at others. All could hear him, but none could understand the words. It was for the best, they think, it was rare now to here the man laugh at all, so why would they stop him.

It indeed made Wilson feel better, at least temperarily, but it always crept back into his mind that Max was never going to here his stories again, never laugh with him, or at him, in some cases. There was no more bickering to be done, no more insulting with playful smiles, or annoying eachother with awful jokes.

There was no more strange, shy moments. No more angry, frustrated moments, moments of victory and celebration, moments of shared sorrow, moments of love and intimacy. 

They all had been swept away with the man of his world, and Wilson was cold without him. Maxwell wasn't Max anymore. Maxwell would never be that man.

Wilson lay on his back, humming through the deafening roars from the heavens, eyes staring at the cieling of his tent, his body on one side of the straw bedding while his hand stretched to the other. In the opposite hand was the rotten remains of Max's flower, held just above Wilson's broken heart. Wilson closed his eyes and cried, and the sky cried with him.


End file.
